The Huawei P8 has been a constant presence in the rumor mill for a few months now. The Chinese manufacturer has generated a lot of hype around the eagerly-anticipated smartphone and hints and speculations have been plentiful.

We are already quite familiar with the dimensions of the device, its upcoming release and alleged price tag and we have even seen some renders, portraying the beautiful craftsmanship of the handset, so, we were fairly certain we knew what to expect on April 15, when the Huawei P8 will be officially unveiled.

A brand new rumor, however, states that the device will not be built around the Kirin 930 SoC, as we previously thought, but will rather sport a brand new Kirin 935. We are already familiar with the Kirin 930 chip – it is based on modified Coretex-A53 cores, dubbed A53E in a big.LITTLE setup and is fund in the Huawei MediaPad X2. Information about the Kirin 935, however, is still scarce. Judging by the model, it should be an upgraded version of its predecessor, so it will probably spout the same processor cores, with a beefed-up GPU.

As far as we know, other specs on the Huawei P8 include a 5.2-inch 1080p screen, 3GB of RAM, 32GB onboard memory and a 2600 mAh battery, all housed in a body, measuring 144.9 x 71.9 x 6.6mm. The main camera should be a 13MP model, perhaps utilizing the Sony IMX278 sensor, but nothing is certain yet. There have even been talks of a fingerprint scanner, but we will just have to wait and see for that.

The Huawei P8 is expected to arrive in two versions, which rumors indicate might be called the standard and platinum edition. The former will reportedly carry a sub $500 price tag, while the latter will be priced around $800. We also heard of a cheaper dual-SIM P8 Lite model in the works, which could be affected by the chipset upgrade as well.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Another week passed and it's time to sum-up the most important stories of the past few days. Xiaomi has had its share of the spotlight, most notably with the 64GB Mi 4 going on sale in India. Another ultra-budget device – the Xiaomi Redmi 2A also made an appearance with a more-than-impressive price tag of $97.

Other than that, the mobile world naturally has its sights set on various rumored and upcoming device. HTC announced the One M8s – a watered-down version of the previous flagship. And the rumor mill has been overflowing with specs and images of a couple of new, bigger devices – the One E9 Plus and One M9 Plus.

The long-overdue Sony Xperia Z4 is still on everybody's minds. The eagerly-awaited flagship has already made an appearance in benchmark results, as well as the FCC. The LG G4 is in pretty much the same boat, only it has an official launch date set for April 28.

In other news, the news Samsung Galaxy S6 has been enduring some serious torture tests, while Apple is said to use force touch in the iPhone 6s Plus.

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Xiaomi Mi 4 64GB goes on open sale at Flipkart in India
No registration is required to purchase the 64GB variant of Mi 4 from Flipkart.

Samsung Galaxy S6 edge survives a brutal drop test video
Despite getting slammed three times on the floor, the Galaxy S6 edge continued to function normally.

Alleged HTC One M9+ press images appear on Twitter
The high-end smartphone is going to make its official debut next month, on April 8 in Beijing.

Sony Xperia Z4 gets benchmarked revealing specs
The next flagship offering from the Japanese smartphone maker is already in testing, it seems.

Asus launches Zenfone 2 in Europe, available tomorrow
The company has officially announced the smartphone for the European market at an event today.

Images of LG G4 in a protective case make the rounds
Protective covers for the yet to be revealed smartphone are already listed on Amazon.

YU Yureka to get a Lollipop update in first week of April
The company promised to release the CyanogenMod 12S update based on Android 5.0 Lollipop after fixing the bugs.

Upcoming Windows 10 for phones build will work on more devices
The announcement was made by Windows Insider manager Gabriel Aul in a blog post.

Alleged Sony Xperia Z4 pays a quick visit to the FCC
The filing reveals that Sony Xperia Z4 has similar physical measures as its predecessor, the Xperia Z3.

iPhone 6C rear casing reportedly shown in leaked pictures
A couple of leaked images are doing the rounds claiming to show the back of the next cheap iPhone.

Asus Zenfone 3 to come with a fingerprint sensor
The feature might even make it to a Zenfone 2 refresh that is coming in the second half of this year.

Lollipop update rollout for the Sony Xperia Z range continues
Two weeks after commencing on March 16, the update is now set on to be made available globally.

LG G4 hits GFX Bench with Snapdragon 808 chipset
A hexa-core processor (2x A57 + 4x A53) and Adreno 418 place it below the LG G Flex2.

Samsung Galaxy Alpha will get Lollipop alongside the Note II
Official Samsung websites are confirming that updates for these two smartphones are in the works.

The unveiling of LG G4 is officially set for April 28
The successor of LG G3 will…

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After having been received by both AT&T's and Sprint's respective versions of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 already, the update to Android 5.0 Lollipop is now on its way to Verizon's model.

The carrier nicknamed Big Red has published the update documentation on its website, which means the rollout of the new software is imminent (if it hasn't started already).

As usual with these things, keep in mind that the over-the-air rollout will be staged, so it might be a few days (or more) before your Note 4 tells you about the update. If you don't want to wait, you can try to manually check by going to Settings > About phone > Software updates.

Your battery will need to be at least half full to initiate the procedure, and you are required to have at least 1.7GB of free space available. After applying the update, you'll be on build LRX22C.N910VVRU1BOAF.

Source 1 (PDF) • Source 2 (PDF) |…

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How big of an impact can a small change have? The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge has only the extra screen curves compared to the vanilla Galaxy S6, but these two phones couldn’t feel any more different – a difference that you can readily feel when you…

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Another day, another HTC One M9 Plus leak. HTC's upcoming handset has been a constant presence in the rumor mill for the past few days and, as it turns out, leaked images are pretty easy to come by. Granted, all we have seen so far are renders, from various sources and they have been getting more and more frequent. We are yet to see some live shots of an actual unit, but, from the looks of things, the smartphone will certainly feature a physical button.

This has been a long-standing debate about the M9 Plus and while one or two renders, could be deceiving in nature, evidence has started piling up and at this point, there is really no ignoring the big, round button, in the middle of the bottom Boom speaker. A brand new set of pictures only further proves this point.

This time, the renders are really up close and personal and the overall design is as clear as daylight. All of the HTC One M9 is there, which is really no surprise, considering the company's track record of sticking with the particular unibody style. The elephant in the room, the button, has naturally led to a lot of controversy and is quite polarizing among fans. Another thing is also clear – HTC has preserved the wide black bar below the display, also, often criticized by users.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Chinese smartphone manufacturer Meizu has announced that it sold around 2 million devices last month. This compares to the 1 and 1.5 million smartphones it sold in the months of December 2014 and January this year, respectively.

Back in February this year, Li Nan, VP of Marketing and Sales at Meizu, said that the company could reach the 20 million figure by the end of the year. However, he also made it clear that it's not something they are aiming to achieve.

The news comes nearly a couple of months after Alibaba Group announced that it will invest $590 million in the smartphone…

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Dredging up a controversial issue from the past, Square Trade decided to redo Bendgate tests this time including the new Samsung Galaxy S6 edge and HTC One M9.

The phones were tested twice – once until they visibly bend and again until they are bent to their breaking point

The Apple iPhone 6 Plus, the phone that kicked off Bendgate, was put under 110 pounds before it got deformed. It took the most pressure, 179 pounds, to break the Apple gadget.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge also bent at 110 pounds, though one of the curved sides of the display cracked. It's protected by Gorilla Glass 4, but the shape of the side makes it more susceptible to cracking. The S6 edge could still power on though so it was put in the press again until it broke at 149 pounds.

Finally, the HTC One M9 first bent at 120 pounds which was its undoing too. The Power button was moved from the top to the center of the right side, exactly where the phone bends (phones tend to bend at the side buttons). The One M9 could not power on after that.

Here's a table with the numbers for each phone:

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Phone Bend weight Breaking weight
Apple iPhone 6 Pls 110lbs 179lbs
HTC One M9 — 120lbs
Samsung Galaxy S6 110lbs 149lbs

Source |…

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The hotly-anticipated Huawei P8 is due to be revealed in less than two weeks from now, with a launch event scheduled for April 15. As the wait is drawing to an end though, we're now being treated to another batch of photos revealing a few details of the smartphone's body.

The surrounding metal frame is the centerpiece of the leak and apparently Huawei is pretty proud of its craftsmanship. A lathe blade is pictured, next to the finely chamfered edges of the frame, accenting its premium quality.

The recessed power button on the right side gets its own photo, together with the volume rocker. Rumor has it that the small button might house a fingerprint sensor, after the P8 passed TENAA certification without one on the back, which was the former concept. The main camera with its dual LED flash in the top left corner of the back is the focus of the third tiny image.

All these features nicely match the previously leaked schematics of the P8. You can also tell that the images belong to the P8 and not its smaller sibling, the P8 Lite, which sports a flipped camera/flash arrangement.

Source |…

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Samsung Electronics has reportedly bagged an order to manufacture mobile chips for the next generation Apple products. Bloomberg reported that Samsung has will make the Apple A9 chipset meant to be used in next generation iPhone and iPad devices.

The production of the Apple's next generation mobile chipset will take place in South Korea. Meanwhile the next generation iPhone models can be expected in late September, if Apple continues its recent…

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In most electronics nowadays performance is king and the more bit-crunching power you can put out, the better. This is not exactly the case with smartphones, though, where power efficiency is equally if not more important.

This being said, however, no true power-user can deny that having more power under the hood is always better and in the mobile realm Samsung currently has the lead, by a long margin. The latest Exynos 7420 chipset, found in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge is way ahead of its competition in sheer performance and according to a new rumor, the Korean giant has something even better in store.

According to the latest reports the next Exynos chip will be powered by custom cores, rather than the stock Cortex A72 silicon. The SoC is allegedly codenamed "Mongoose" and will be clocked at 2.3 GHz. The rumor also cites a single-core Geekbench score, which is impressive, to say the least. The number is around 2200, which is about 45% better than the current Exynos.

Now, this should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is entirely in the realm of rumors, at least for now. Furthermore, even if this information is true and Samsung powered the Galaxy Note 5 or the next Galaxy S device with the new entirely custom chip, raw-power does not necessarily translate into real-world performance and a lot of other factors have to be considered as well, most notably – battery life.

Thanks for the tip CLARiiON

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